The Lens of Familiarity
by Masked Man 2
Summary: An essay analyzing the importance of modern film adaptations with regards to discussing the effect of Shakespeare's plays on our pop culture. Written for a class.


The Lens of Familiarity:

An Analysis of the Relevance of Filmic Adaptation to a Modern Understanding of Shakespeare

Shakespeare originally intended for his plays to appeal to a broad and diverse audience, from the lowliest of illiterate laborers to the Queen herself. Now, however, his works are canonized- idolized, at the very least- as being scholarly pieces of the highest caliber, and as such, have become nearly inaccessible to less academically inclined members of modern society. Younger audiences in particular seem to find the language and thematic complexity of the plays daunting. Often they simply do not bother with the texts at all, dismissing them as too "boring" or "hard" and therefore losing the opportunity to embrace the richness of the plays as they pertain to the universality of human emotional experience. The challenge of adapters, then, is to take Shakespeare's plays and make them as accessible to a varied audience as they once were. Perhaps the most effective way to achieve this mass conveyance is through the visual medium- more specifically, through the adaptation of Shakespeare's plays to film. Because film is so familiar to a modern audience, audiences are better able to relate to characters and plotlines experienced through this lens of familiarity. In a similar vein, the "visual code of film carries a stronger meaning for audiences than the verbal one" (Semenza 39); the heightened sense of identification with works experienced visually rather than verbally provides an excellent basis for the exploration of Shakespeare's more universal themes in a manner accessible to a modern audience regardless of age or level of academic affiliation with Shakespeare.

Three sub-genres of film in particular stand out as being most supportive of the idea that films seek, above all, to make the thematic richness of Shakespeare widely accessible. "Straight" adaptations, modern-language adaptations, and teen films all take unique approaches to the ways in which they interact with the Shakespearean plays they represent to better serve the common end of engendering greater accessibility. In fact, the variances in these sub-genres' ways of presenting the plays to their audiences more successfully pitches the themes of Shakespeare's plays at audiences equally varied. They may, as do the films of Trevor Nunn, Kenneth Branagh, and their ilk, leave the language of the plays intact, instead transmitting the underlying themes through the elements of visual and sound as supplements to the original linguistic complexity; they may also transpose the language to a modern setting. By no means, however, is inherent complexity wholly lost in transposition. Even if the original language is "[left]...almost entirely behind," implying a "dumbing down" of the message of the play, the fact that that simplification enables the message to reach and make sense to a modern audience, makes films that utilize transposition just as valuable as those that do not (Burt 207). Linguistic differences between adaptive styles enable these three genres to speak to various audiences. Those differences, however, become reconciled in the cinematic techniques inherent to filmic adaptation, giving film a nearly universal appeal.

I think it prudent, first, to address that topic of reconciliation via cinematic techniques. The visual, the auditory, the musical- these are the elements that are only implicit in text; these are the elements alighted upon by adapters looking to illuminate the underlying messages in Shakespeare's plays. Often complex prose buries these messages, and scenes that reveal them occur offstage and are related as secondhand accounts. This deliberate masking of theme can create an element of ambiguity that, while valuable in the sense that it offers great fodder for critical interpretation, can be off-putting to an audience more interested in understanding the play and its personal relevance. Techniques such as flashbacks, visual representations of thoughts, dream sequences, close-camera asides, soundtracks as emotional supplements, and voiceover eliminate a great deal of textual ambiguity. This elimination allows the audience to feel more "in tune" with what is occurring physically, psychologically, and thematically. Many film versions of _Othello_ , for example, choose to include images such as Cassio's contrived dream of sleeping with Desdemona, while productions of _Hamlet_ often include nebulous images of the "mad" Hamlet, "Ungartered, and down-gyvèd to his ankle;/ Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other," as he appears to Ophelia in her chamber- a scene that, in the play, is described to Polonius rather than observed (2.1.80-81). The onscreen depiction of offstage scenes can heighten the emotional tension of the action with an efficacy that simple verbal relation cannot achieve, and that increase in tension enables the audience to connect more easily with the plights of the characters. While some danger certainly lies in portraying concretely what was likely intended to remain ambiguous, the accessibility of Shakespeare to a modern audience depends more on connection with the text than invitation to analysis of it. The elimination of ambiguity goes a long way toward strengthening that connection.

Of course, connections strengthen best through communication- through language. The various ways in which adaptations modify the original text- be it through cuts, rearrangement of scenes, or translation to modern vernacular- delineate the most obvious distinctions between "straight" adaptations and "transposed" ones. What links the juxtaposed sub-genres, however, is the undue criticism heaped upon this modification of language. Critics of film adaptations "tend to focus on the number of 'cuts' typically made in the process of adapting a play for the screen" (Semenza 37); they argue that the systematic removal of obscure, overly complex, or morally ambiguous material from the adaptation sacrifices the complexity of word and action that gives Shakespeare's plays their thematic richness. This process of pruning is, of course, most notable in adaptations that retain the original language. Oliver Parker's 1995 film _Othello_ , for example, shortened many of Iago's longer soliloquies, and excised lines and even whole scenes, such as the beginning of Act 2, scene 1, that were not absolutely integral to the central story of Othello, Desdemona, and Iago's treachery. Trevor Nunn's 1996 version of _Twelfth Night_ cuts many lines that do not serve to move the plot forward, but, interestingly, added lines such as Feste's opening narration. This approach contrasts greatly with that of Kenneth Branagh and Paul Kafno in their 1988 telefilm production of the same play, which changed virtually nothing, raising the potential question of whether adaptations that remain so faithful to the source text ought to be grouped with those that modify it at all. Julian Fellowes's 2013 adaptation of _Romeo and Juliet_ employs even more drastic alterations in that it not only cuts significant portions of the original text, but completely changes lines and interactions, ostensibly to make the dialogue more "appropriately conversational" where it originally comes off as heavy-handed (Bell). Certainly some nuance is lost in the excision of dated allusions, witty one-line rejoinders, or similar devices, but I would argue that that excision does not undermine the overall sophistication of the plot. Rather, it isolates those elements in the text which are most critical to understanding the play's emotional impact. Tightening dialogical focus onto the central plot brings the nuances of that plot into sharper relief against the muddled backdrop of the text's linguistic complexity. Audiences are better able to appreciate what they can understand; thus, pulling central conflicts to the forefront of the dialogue in original-language adaptations makes the emotions, relationships, and themes inherent within that conflict clear.

If original-language adaptations are able to emphasize the central themes and conflicts

of their source plays through careful pruning of the dialogue, modern-language adaptations go

even a step further in bringing understanding of Shakespeare's themes to a modern audience by

relating those themes in the audience's own tongue. In addition, most of these transposed adaptations aim to reach teenage audiences. Films such as _10 Things I Hate About You_ , _O_ , and

 _She's The Man_ adroitly utilize the vernacular of their target audience- an audience notorious for

its dismissal of Shakespeare's texts- to showcase the central emotional conflicts and themes of

their source plays in a manner that that audience can thoroughly relate to. Teens watching an

exchange such as the following from _She's The Man_ , for example, would track the scene's humor and characterization techniques much more easily through the use of modern language:

Andrew: Well hey there pretty lady.

Monique: Ew! What...why are you hitting on me?

Andrew: I was just-

Monique: [ _mimicking_ ] "I was just...nyuh." OK, let me put a stop to that little brain fart right

now. Girls with asses like mine do not talk to boys with faces like yours ( _She's The Man_ ).

Audiences are better able to relate to the core themes that pertain more closely to their own experiences through the use of modern dialogue. The use of twenty-first century vernacular lays out the conflicts in terms that a modern audience can easily understand, and that elucidation of conflict reflects it back to the audience. They could just as easily be Viola, disguising her identity, or Andrew, trying and failing to pursue romantic interests out of his league. They could be Othello, desperately wondering if his significant other is unfaithful; they could be Iago, fixated on ruining the life of one by whom they felt irreparably wronged. They could be Malvolio, willing to move mountains to gain a higher social standing. They could be Katharine, willing to do the same to prove how much they value their independence and free will. Connections with the texts abound once the central themes are made clear.

The academic proclivity for placing Shakespeare's works up on a pedestal has created a

profound divide between the audiences the texts intend to reach and the audiences they

actually reach. By representing these works in familiar modern mediums, adapters can work to bridge this gap between intent and reality, allowing audiences to form more puissant connections with texts that offer insight into universal experiences. Film in particular is valuable in considering the question of making Shakespeare accessible to a modern audience because the medium is so broad, able to extend its message towards a wide range of ages and capacities of intellectual understanding. The visual representation of a work allows the audience to see action unfold, entrenching them more deeply within the plot and the emotional conflicts of the characters. The various modifications of language in Shakespearean film serve to isolate and highlight the most critical threads of those plots and conflicts. The collaboration of both the visual and the linguistic, then, brings those plots and conflicts clearly into the forefront of the audience's mind-eye, engendering a deeper level of understanding of and connection with the text. This connection is the sole aim of popular culture's representation of Shakespeare, and certainly film is not alone in its endeavor to bring to life the central emotional themes of the plays and enable the understanding of them as they pertain to the modern human experience. Shakespeare's works are not by any means alien, or inaccessible. They simply need to be fitted with a lens of familiarity in order to make their sheer relevance understood.

Works Cited

Bell, John Michael. "How Not to Adapt _'Romeo and Juliet.'_ " . 25 Oct. .

Burt, Richard. "T(E)En Things I Hate About Girlene Shakesploitation Flicks in the Late 1990s, or, Not-So-Fast Times at Shakespeare High." _Spectacular Shakespeare: Critical Theoryand Popular Cinema._ Edited by Courtney Lehmann and Lisa S. Starks. Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2002, pp. 205-232.

Semenza, Gregory M. Colón. "Teens, Shakespeare, and the Dumbing-Down Cliché: The Case of _The Animated Tales_ " Shakespeare Bulletin, vol. 26, no. 2, 2008, pp. 37-68.

Shakespeare, William. _The Norton Shakespeare._ Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, et al. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2008. Print.

 _She's The Man_. Screenplay by Ewan Leslie, Karen McCullah, and Kirsten Smith. Dir. Andy Fickman. Prod. Marty Ewing, et al. Perf. Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum, Laura Ramsey. Dreamworks SKG, 2006. DVD.


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